Qt Software has made Qt 4.5 and the Qt Creator 1.0 IDE available for download. For the first time, Qt SDK is available, a convenient bundle of the two. Qt Software will be opening up their development process by making it easier for people to contribute patches and add-ons in the forthcoming weeks. Both Qt and Creator now come with the an LGPL licensing option along with the current GPL and commercial licenses.

Qt Embedded is the old Qtopia-Core. Qt Extended is the old Qtopia. Qt/Embedded still exists, and is the same as ever (except that it's finally in sync with other Qt's).

Everyone cursed Qtopia, it was a huge marketing mistake. People would get excited by the promises, buy it, and then find out they had to do an extreme amount of hacking to get it to run on their hardware. What was supposed to be a convenient bundle of stuff for targeted embedded audiences (phone and home) ended up being more trouble than it was worth. Most customers ended up just using Qt/Embedded and doing their own integration.

First selected features from Qt Extended will be re-factored and migrated into Qt, making it cross platform. There are several APIs as Blutetooth, IP telephony and input devices like touchscreens. Those will be available not only for Linux Embedded, but also on S60, Win CE and the different desktop systems. Things that will not be migrated into Qt are some legacy code which have little future value. This changes will not happen over night. It will take time.

The added APIs in Qt will make it more easy making exiting KDE applications, reaching out to more devices with interesting input methods and connectivity. For those who may got concern that their Qt Extended/Qtopia applications will not run, they should know that most Qt Extended applications runs on Qt functionality. So it will not be a traumatic transition.

Secondly there will be added more unit tests. Relevant test/demo applications will be cross platform. The plan is to also continue the "select a device profile", which let developers build a example stack of applications for different targets. This was Linux only. The plan is to make the "choose a profile" system cross platform, improving the quality of the migrated APIs.

Third we are opening up for external contributions by opening up Qt repository, using Git and Gitorious. We will not ask for copyright assignment. Instead we will ask contributors to grant Qt Software rights to reuse and improve the code as a part of Qt. When opening up, we are making communication more transparent, increasing our effort with community code camps and developer gatherings.

It might make a difference in performance, but that's about it. Fixing the dialogs is simple (mostly a point-and-click job), it doesn't require many skills so if you really want it to happen - help. I guestimate one can fix the worst ones within a couple of weeks doing it in spare time (say an hour a day on average)

This lowers the barrier of entering the Qt technolgy significantly. Do you remember Delphi or C++Builder? After installing the program you dragged a few components to the form, pressed the compile button and voila - you had your first compiled application. In contrast I found it quite messy to persuade Visual Studio to build Qt applications. Now we have the Borland feeling again without compiler vendor lock in, plus cross platform.
My guess: In a few years Qt will be the dominating API for application development on all platforms.

i think the too late statement might be a little harsh - this is the long term, do remember, Qt has all the power required - the only other alternatives are Java/Swing and .NET, and neither of those are as comprehensive as Qt... With this release, the new license and the SDK, there really is no technologically based reason for not choosing Qt for application development - the only reasons are either personal or management-made IT decisions (and dog knows those happen all the time, but... at least now there are very valid and hard-hitting arguments for those opposed to them ;) ).